IPO Daily Report: MP3.com more than triples at open

SteveGelsi

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- MP3.com more than tripled at its open Wednesday as investors turned up the volume on the online music specialist's initial public offering.

Shares of San Diego-based MP3.com
mppp
started trading at 92, a whopping $64 above its $28 price for its $346 million IPO.Shares cooled off by the end of the day with a close of 61 on volume of 15.8 million, the fifth most active stock on the Nasdaq for the day.

Meanwhile, Austin, Texas-based Hoovers
hoov
opened at 24, up 10 from its $14 price. Shares of the financial information specialist fell back to close at 22 on volume of 8.2 million shares.

UPS

Package delivery giant UPS, a long-time private firm with about $1.7 billion in profit last year, surprised some IPO watchers by filing for a $100 million offering with Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter.

Standard & Poors transportation analyst Stephen Klein estimated the offering would be valued at about $55 per share in the open market. But UPS won't grab as a big a market cap as rival FedEx
FDX, -0.48%
because it's offering such a small slice of the company.

"It's a thin float," he said. "It's a way for employees that hold stock in the company to possibly get a better price for their shares. They probably looked at what FedEx was doing, and they decided to do it."

MP3.com

A general shift by the record industry and pop music entrepreneurs to explore digital distribution of music boosted MP3.com, said Lucas Graves, analyst with Jupiter Communications.

MP3.com, which maintains a Web site where consumers can search, sample and download music free of charge, priced its shares above its range of $24 to $26. A move to increase the range from $9 to $11 and boost the number of shares to 12.3 million from 9 million failed to quench demand for the IPO, led by CS First Boston.

Voyager.Net

Voyager.Net's
voyn
$136 million IPO with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette surged on the opening Wednesday to $19.50 from an offering price of $15, but fell back to post a meager gain.

The company, which is the largest Internet service provider in the Midwestern United States, ended the day at 15 1/16 on heavy volume. The company offered about 7.9 million shares at a range of $13 to $15 per share. It posted $21.9 million in pro forma revenue and $11.1 million in losses last year. Genentech

Hoovers and MP3.com came on the heels of a blowout day from the blockbuster $2 billion offering from South San Francisco-based Genentech
DNA, -5.00%
the largest ever biotech IPO.

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